Reviewed by David Potter, Department of Classical Studies, The
University of Michigan.

This volume offers a collection of six essays that were presented at a
conference in 1993 at the University of London. The conference itself
seems to have been well planned, for all six contributions are good, and
the volume as a whole should become a starting point for the study of the
Second Punic War. It is stated in the preface that the impetus behind the
conference was a course on warfare and society in the ancient world
offered by the departments of history, classics and war studies. An
interest in the way that wars were actually fought is evident here, with
three articles that specifically address the nature of battle (by John
Lazenby, Sabin and Philip Rawlings), and a fourth on the war at sea (by
Rankov). John Rich contributed a very long article on the origins of the
war, and Cornell produced an article on the impact on Italy.

Organized conflict is a form of activity as old as the state, but (with
some notable exceptions over the years) classical historians have tended
to steer clear of it. And when they do express an interest, this interest
is greater with reference to the beginnings and ends of conflicts than to
their actual course. Some reluctance to deal with the course of campaign
and battle is legitimate. While studies of war were aimed at the
reconstruction of maneuvers on the field of battle, there was very little
that the historian wary of conjecture could reasonably offer. In recent
years, however, one fruitful area in the study of human conflict that has
blossomed is the anthropology of the battlefield. What actually motivates
groups of human beings to walk across a field, usually a relatively small
field, in the direction of another group of human beings who want to kill
them? What are the relationships between men in the ranks? What do their
weapons do to other people? What impact do long periods of marching have
on the physical well-being of soldiers? The organized march is not only a
way of getting soldiers onto a battlefield, it is also a technique for the
destruction of large populations whose annihilation with edged weapons was
impractical, and an organized march can rapidly transform itself into a
catastrophe if its stages are not calculated with great precision. How do
officers compel or inspire obedience? What is the job of the general?
How did this job change over time? What is the impact of conflict on
non-combatants? Our sources may not be good on topography, but they have an
enormous amount to tell us in answer to questions such as these. Many of
these questions are addressed in Adrian Goldsworthy's valuable new book on
the Roman army from 100 BC-200 AD, and they are addressed by Philip
Sabin's
excellent article in the volume under review here.

The Second Punic war was marked by an almost unprecedented search for the
decisive engagement, and it here that Hannibal was the master. As Sabin
points out, battles were generally rather easy to avoid. If an army
stayed in its camp, there was very little that a general who desired
battle could do about it, a point thoroughly appreciated by Gnaeus Pompey
in 48. But the Roman military doctrine of the second century was
dedicated precisely to this sort of encounter. Hannibal understood this,
and proved to be the master of grand tactical maneuvers that placed his
opponents at a grave psychological disadvantage. Another point that Sabin
brings out is the fact that most battles lasted for several hours, usually
with comparatively light casualties. The reason for this is that the
Roman infantryman (and his Punic counterpart) tended to stay away from
his enemy. It is inconceivable that any human being could actively wield
a weapon for an hour, rather the two sides would approach to within
shouting distance, and engage in a series of brief encounters until, as a
result of repeated push backs in short encounters an entire line began to
move back. Hannibal took advantage of the nature of infantry combat with
his superior cavalry, for the surprise attack on a flank or rear had an
extraordinary impact on lines of tired men, causing them to panic, to
bunch together, and cease to defend themselves. Units that have been in
conflict tire very quickly, and the Roman system of battle reliefs served,
in this war to ensure that all the troops would be exhausted. Tired
soldiers tend to panic more readily than others.

Sabin confines himself to the battles of the Second Punic war, but his
study of the nature of the battlefield has enormous implications for the
general study of Roman imperialism. For it is through an understanding of
the nature of battle that we can gain some insight into the expectations
of the people who made the decisions to fight. Roman armies were designed
to put immense pressure on their enemies for a short period of time, the
system of battle reliefs, fatal in a drawn out battle, could be very
effective in pushing a line back in the short term. A Roman consul and
his army went out in search of the quick, decisive victory. This was the
ideal that had emerged from warfare in Italy, reinforced by the ideology
of the triumph, which celebrated precisely this kind of war. It took the
experience of Hannibalic warfare to breed a different kind of general, a
general who viewed a campaign as something other than the search for an
opportunity to line his fellow citizens up and charge.

Louis Rawlings' study of warrior societies complements Sabin's study. The
Romans were used to fighting Gauls, whose habits were ideally suited to
the provision of Roman triumphs. Warrior societies, as Rawlings shows,
place enormous stress on personal displays of valor. Gauls delighted in
challenging their opponents to single combat, and in overwhelming their
enemies with a single charge. The Roman technique of battle reliefs was
ideally suited to an enemy that sought victory at the first press. The
result was that the Gauls tired quickly, and the Roman capacity to bring
in fresh troops meant that they had little time to recover. The rate of
exhaustion in a Gallic army plainly being faster than in the Roman,
battles would end faster and there was no need to worry about the
peripherals to the main infantry encounter.

After Cannae, Maharbal is said to have told Hannibal that he knew how to
win battles, but that he did not know what to do with his victory.
Lazenby takes issue with this, in his thoughtful essay on Hannibal's
strategy. In his view, Hannibal recognized that the war could only be won
if he fought it with Rome's resources. His aim was to draw upon the
manpower of Italy to defeat Rome. He was not so impractical as to think
that he could destroy Rome; a point that is obvious in the terms of his
treaty with Philip V (a document that deserves rather more attention than
it gets here). The greater issue that emerges from Lazenby's study, just
as it does from the contributions of Sabin and Rawlings is the capacity of
Hannibal, and others, to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman
military system. The study of Hannibal's war offers an insight into the
way that an intelligent contemporary "read" Roman society in the third
century BC.

By way of contrast to the First Punic War, the Second Punic war saw no
decisive encounter at sea. Rankov points out that the reason for this
lies in geography. In order for large fleets to operate, they need to
control harbors. As a result of the first Punic war, the Carthaginians
did not have access to landing spots in Sicily, and thus could not support
Hannibal by sea. This is an intelligent piece of work with implications
for other periods of ancient history, where control of the sea (and
landing places) proved less than decisive in the absence of an enemy who
was prepared to contest the point. It was only when Rome could free up
resources to take advantage of its command of the sea, that sea power
mattered. Anyone interested in the viability of the "Periclean" strategy
for the Peloponnesian war ought to read this article.

Rich and Cornell talk about the beginning and the end. Rich argues, with
considerable conviction that the Roman attitude towards Carthage in 218
was essentially defensive, that Roman interests in Spain prior to 219 were
likewise defensive, and that some Romans (e.g. Fabius) were aware of
serious divisions within Carthaginian political society over the wisdom of
the Barcid policy in Spain. The embassy that was sent to Carthage in 218
was intended, by Fabius, to attempt to exploit these divisions, but the
terms which the embassy delivered were far from what Fabius would have
hoped, in that they invited a declaration of war. This is rather
important as a corrective to the view that the Roman state pursued a
single-mindedly aggressive policy in the third century BC. Cornell takes
issue with the view (represented most plainly in Brunt's Italian Manpower)
that the Second Punic War had serious, long term consequences for Italy.
Reviving the notion of Toynbee that Roman society was set on a new course
by the destruction of Italy in the course of more than a decade of
struggle, Cornell sees a connection between the enormous losses in
manpower and the introduction of slave-based agriculture. It is an
impressively constructed argument, but one that I am less than comfortable
with. The proof, it seems to me, of a long term decline in manpower or a
deracination of the Italian peasantry is lacking in the face of the huge
armies of Italian peasants that were mobilized for the Social War and the
civil wars of the first half of the first century BC. These issues will,
of course, remain open as long as there is debate as to what it was that
Tiberius Gracchus thought he was talking about. Those who want to see a
serious problem in the late second century BC will take comfort from
Cornell.

All in all, this is an impressive volume, the papers are all good. They
raise issues of genuine importance for the study of conflict and society
in the Roman world.